(upbeat music) - [Announcer] Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

(music continues) - Hello, welcome to Illinois Stories.

I'm Mark McDonald in downtown Jacksonville on East State Street, where the old post office, about 120 years old, which was a restaurant and then was abandoned and vacant for many years is now the new Jacksonville Area Museum.

So new, in fact, the paint still smells fresh.

You know, it's unusual for us to shoot two Illinois Stories in the same location, but Dave Blanchette, we were here several months ago, and the reason we wanted to do it then was because you were having a tour.

I think it was called a work in progress tour.

- That's correct.

- You know, and I wanted to get a look at the museum before it was filled with items and before it was, you know, gussied up the way it is now.

So here we are back, and you just recently had your grand opening.

- We did.

- And had a terrific turnout, more than 150 people or so came out to look at the new museum.

And when you stand here and look around, you really get the impression you still are in the old post office, but it's really changed, hasn't it?

- It really has.

It was something that we're always cognizant of is that the post office is one of our chief artifacts.

So we wanted to make use of the original architecture in the building, and at the same time, put new exhibits in that.

And as you can see by looking around, you can still see all the original oak trim work.

You can see the original marble floor, the original high ceilings.

So it certainly retains the atmosphere of a post office, and yet, it's been adaptively reused as a museum.

- Yeah.

And when you look at it, I mean, it's gorgeous.

And you tell me that most of this work, or almost all this work, was done by volunteers.

- [David Blanchette] With a few exceptions, almost all the work was done by volunteers.

And we have a very active, very talented, very creative board that has spent a lot of hours getting this ready in the form in which you see it.

- It is so beautiful and bright.

I notice you do have some specialized lighting here that's for museum purposes.

And you have to have that, because your exhibits have to be lit just a certain way all day.

- That's correct, and that's one of the few things that we actually had to pay a professional to do.

But everything else that you see here is volunteer labor.

- I love the old tile flooring.

This is terrific.

Okay, well, let's start.

How is it laid out?

Because it's sort of in a U shape, isn't it?

- The museum is laid out in a U shape because we're developing it in phases.

This is phase one, and this is the part of the museum that's open to the public, but it's the old lobby, the old post office box area, the old postmaster's office area that has been adaptively reused as a museum.

And so every nook and cranny, we've got exhibits in here that tell different facets of the story of Jacksonville.

And the reason we chose these topics is because you got to dance with the guy who brung ya.

So we have to go with the artifacts that we actually have.

So that's why we pick these particular topics to interpret in the museum.

- Well, and it works out really well.

And many of these are either on loan or just donated to your organization.

- Most of them have been donated, some of them belong to the old museum that was in operation many years ago, but several have been donated recently.

And there's some that are on loan.

- You have a desk coming in right now.

Let's move this way.

If you go to the right, as you walk in, one of the first things you see is your industry exhibit, and of course, Jacksonville has had an immense change in industry because industries come and go, but poor Jacksonville was a huge industrial town at one time, and has taken some real blows, hasn't it?

- [David Blanchette] It has, and this tells a story of some of the bigger industries, certainly not all of them, but we hit some of the highlights, the Ferris wheel manufacturing plant, Mrs Tucker's, the food processing plant, cigar manufacturing, which was huge back in the day.

And then we tell the story about bringing water to the community of Jacksonville and what a difference that made in the ability to attract industry here in town.

- [Mark McDonald] Now, was that when Lake Jacksonville was built, 'cause that would have been-- - [David Blanchette] No, this was the water line that went to the Illinois River.

So you can have fresh water from an Illinois River aquifer, piped in 23 miles to town.

And that gave a reliable supply of clean water for industries that needed it.

- [Mark McDonald] Mrs Tucker gets a lot of attention here.

Who was Mrs Tucker?

- Mrs Tucker was the corporate face of a company that was based in Texas at the time that made several types of cooking things, including shortening.

And we've got some original shortening containers there.

Through the years, that factory changed hands.

It was Kraft for a while, it was AC HumKo for a while.

So that was one of the main industries that we were able to attract here in Jacksonville, because of the reliable supply of clean water.

- Ferris wheels are still made here.

- They are.

- And this, I don't know what Big Eli was, but Big Eli was probably the first major Ferris wheel, or one of them, anyway.

- It's one of the first major smaller Ferris wheels, the kind that people would typically ride at carnivals.

There's a story about the founder of the company going to see the Colombian Exposition in Chicago in 1893, and thinking, "I can do this on a smaller scale."

And so he began building.

- Ah, okay.

- Ferris wheels, and they now make carnival rides.

I believe the Scrambler is one of the ones that they make.

(laughing) - So I can bring this much joy to people in a smaller community, right?

(crosstalk) Now cigars, you mentioned that was a big, and what I find interesting about this is you're still getting donations, and this is a really special piece right here.

- That was donated literally minutes ago.

(laughing) - [David Blanchette] By someone who was our guest over the weekend and said, hey, I've got an original Pyatt's cigar sign from Jacksonville.

That's the oldest cigar maker in Jacksonville, no longer in existence, but founded in 1843.

And she brought that sign in.

That's an example of what can happen when you've got a facility like this.

- [Mark McDonald] That's right.

And it's a terrific condition.

- [David Blanchette] It really is.

- [Mark McDonald] It looks like it's brand new.

- [David Blanchette] It really is.

- [Mark McDonald] Ah, wonderful.

Okay, now you said you can't be in central Illinois and not have a Lincoln exhibit.

Well, the fact is, he spent quite a bit of time here, didn't he?

- [David Blanchette] He did.

He had a lot of friends and associates here.

He had several legal cases here.

He, of course, did a lot of campaigning here for various political offices, both for himself and for others.

Some of the more notable people people may be familiar with, General Benjamin Grierson, who led the famous cavalry raid during the Civil War, James Jaquess, who was the first president of the Illinois Conference Female Academy, and then he went on secret missions on behalf of President Lincoln.

And then there are others, of course, Newton Bateman, John J Hardin, Joseph Duncan, Governor of Illinois, and David Smith, who has a building named after him at Illinois College.

- [Mark McDonald] And Duncan's interesting because his home is here.

And in fact, it served as the executive mansion for a time.

- [David Blanchette] That's correct.

And it is still open for public tours and interpreted as a historic site.

- [Mark McDonald] Yeah.

Yeah.

It's a terrific visit too.

And the Lincoln desk, this is the Lincoln style of desk.

- [David Blanchette] It's a style, yes.

It's not an original desk, but we have seen the original desk, and we got something that's as close as possible to that.

- [Mark McDonald] It's really nicely put together.

- [David Blanchette] And that's not his hat.

- No, it's not, we don't have one of those, but would be nice, wouldn't it?

Okay.

And then, okay.

We were talking about business, well, medicine as well, and around, oh, circa 18, no, 1900, I guess this would have been about what a physicians office would look like.

- [David Blanchette] Well, some of these.

We have equipment here from the 1890s through about the 1920s or so.

And it's just kind of a hodgepodge of some of the artifacts that we have on hand that we either own or were donated.

You've got Greene Vardiman Black, the father of modern dentistry.

You've got some original dentist tools in their cabinet and a medical chair.

And then this evil looking contraption over here.

(laughing) Is an original x-ray machine.

It was from the early 1900s.

And then you've got microscopes and some other things, as well as the baby scale that a famous Jacksonville doctor, who's recently deceased, used to weigh thousands of babies that he delivered in the Jacksonville area.

So that one dates from very recently.

So it's just a big span of time that these artifacts cover.

It's a thematic exhibit, more than anything.

- [Mark McDonald] A thousand babies weighed on that scale.

- Well, more than a thousand.

- You mentioned something interesting, not Dr Bone, but Dr Black, you called him the father of modern dentistry.

And he was from here.

- He was from here, yes.

- What did he do that was so modern?

- He invented a lot of techniques, and formulas for fillings, and machinery that was used in dentistry for many, many years.

- Okay.

So it wasn't just, okay.

Come in with a toothache, let's pull it.

He was working on how to save your teeth.

- He was working on all sorts of things, and he set the standard for what dentists use today in many areas.

- That's neat.

That's neat.

Okay.

Let's go back further.

And these were all signs that were in town at some point, and people, I guess, kept them in garages or kept them, you know, collected them, and kept them in good shape.

And then somehow they found their way here.

- [David Blanchette] Promotional signs of all sizes, shapes, varieties, promotional items.

You've got toy trucks, you've got a bank's eagle costume.

You've got signs that would have been used at exhibits and expos, to signs that actually hung on the outside of buildings.

Now, we had a lot of these in our collection and we thought, what can we do with all these nice colorful signs?

Aha, let's make an entire wall of them.

(laughing) So that's what we did.

And it really is eye catching.

It really draws people down to the end of this exhibit corridor.

- And, you know, it's important to keep in mind everything that's in here is from Morgan County or Jacksonville.

So people aren't looking at things that came from somewhere else in the Midwest.

These were all positioned right here, weren't they?

- One of the main things that we consider when we think about items for our collection is what is its connection to Jacksonville.

And if there's a connection there and we don't already have one in our collection, we will more than likely take it.

- This is priceless.

- [David Blanchette] An original Coke machine.

It's seen better days, of course, but it's the type that people would have seen in the 60s and 70s, growing up around here.

- [Mark McDonald] And I guess this switchboard came from here, but at some point-- - [David Blanchette] It did.

- When they were very few phones in Jacksonville, I assume that there was one operator on this probably 24 hours a day.

- And this is our children's area, where kids can actually plug in phone calls.

They can take the cables, and actually plug them in, and pretend like they're hooking up a telephone call.

And we have the sides of it that have plexiglass, so the kids can see how it actually operates on the inside.

So if you pull a cable up, you can actually see how it pulls up on the inside.

Then we have Mrs Tucker's puzzle, corporate logo puzzle.

Kids can take it apart, put it back together, learn a little bit about Mrs Tucker.

- [Mark McDonald] This phone, back to this phone again.

I mean, kids all have cell phones now, little computers in their hands all the time.

They must look at this and go, "what?"

(laughing) - We sometimes joke with them saying, hey, can you carry this around?

(laughing) Can you text your friends on this?

- Oh, man.

Okay.

And people may not know this too, even old time Jacksonville folks may not know that there was an amphitheater right in the middle of the town.

And this is a huge amphitheater.

This would've sat hundreds.

- [David Blanchette] This is the Greek theater, and it was located in what is now known as Veteran's Park.

And it was made for the Centennial of Jacksonville in 1925.

It seated 5,000 people.

- [Mark McDonald] Wow.

- [David Blanchette] But it fell into disuse after only a few years, and it was then filled in, and there's really no evidence of it that exists today.

So a lot of people lived in Jacksonville for many years never even knew this existed right in the center of town.

- [Mark McDonald] Did somebody just came in, and moved a lot of earth, and just buried it, I guess.

- [David Blanchette] Yeah.

- Oh, that'd be an interesting dig.

Really would, if anybody could ever afford to uncover that.

- Wonder if archeologists of the future might think we were Rome or something like that, when they uncovered this.

- It's really neat.

Okay.

And what's this old book?

- [David Blanchette] This is Mrs Carson's birthing book.

Mrs Carson, Catherine Kendall Carson, as a matter of fact, was one of the first settlers of Morgan County.

And she was a very famous, very successful midwife.

And this is her original book in which she kept track of the women for whom she delivered babies.

And there are hash marks after each woman's name as to how many babies she'd delivered for them.

And as you can see, they were very prolific in those days.

- [Mark McDonald] Some of those are like, 10 and 12, you can see.

- [David Blanchette] Yeah, some big families.

So that's one of our most precious artifacts, as well as the spurs for Jacob Strawn, a very successful early farmer who bought a lot of land around Jacksonville in the 1820s, and eventually owned about 20,000 acres.

You know, a cattle baron, if you will.

- The strong art museum, or art gallery, is here-- (crosstalk) Is that here, the same Strawn?

- Yes.

- Okay.

Now, okay, we also have, I think William Jennings Bryan ran for president once or twice.

I'm not sure how his history went, but we're going to learn more about him as we go here.

But here he is at age 36, the youngest person in US history to receive an electoral vote for president.

And why is this here?

(laughing) - William Jennings Bryan lived and worked in Jacksonville, and the house in which he lived burned down, but this artifact, and many others, were moved out before the new house on the site was built.

And we happened to come into possession of it many, many years ago.

I don't know the exact story about it.

But a presidential candidate actually bathed in here.

And as we like to joke, "William Jennings Bryan, lawyer, politician, secretary of state, and bather."

(laughing) - And we can prove it.

- We can prove it.

We don't know that he used it, but he owned it.

- It's interesting how you became interested in William Jennings Bryan, because, as you saw, you were a lawyer here in Jacksonville for some years, and learned that you were practicing law in the same building that he did.

So you had a connection there.

- Yeah, so I learned that probably 20 years ago or so.

And it was interesting because, in his memoirs, William Jennings Bryan talks about listening to the footsteps of people coming up to the second floor of the building that we're in.

And they didn't always go to see William Jennings Bryan, there were other lawyers up there.

But that was his initiation to practicing law here in Jacksonville.

- He ran for president three times, and you've got some really interesting memorabilia that you're actually donating this very day to the museum.

So let's take a look at some of these items, because they kind of track his political career as far as where he was running.

His first campaign, you have a lapel pin, which it's amazing to me how small these things were.

But even back then in 1896, they had these little publicity pins, didn't they?

- Yeah.

This one, it's actually a stud.

So it would fit through the lapel opening on a jacket, as opposed to having a pin back on it.

Yes.

This was from his first run to be the President of the United States, which he lost.

- Yeah.

Well, yeah.

I think he lost all three, didn't he?

- He did.

- And he wasn't terribly successful.

Of course, he was running against, I think he ran against McKinley and Taft, and those were difficult races.

Anybody would have had a difficult time at that time.

And then he decided to go on tour, didn't he?

He took a little vacation to Europe.

- Right, in 1903, he took his son, William Jennings Bryan, on a European trip.

And that included going to Moscow, Russia, where he wanted to talk with Leo Tolstoy.

- [Mark McDonald] Oh, okay.

- And so, as a result, he sent a postcard back to his friends here in Jacksonville, the inscription on the postcard, it's a photo of the Moscow Bell, but the inscription says "not so far, but I can remember Jacksonville friends, W J Bryan," and then he sent it to his three democratic party friends here in Jacksonville.

Millard Fillmore Dunlap, O P Thompson, and Charles A Barnes.

And the thing that I always found interesting is that that's really all that he had to put on the postcard.

There are three names, Jacksonville, Illinois, USA, put in a Russian stamp, and it got delivered to Jacksonville.

(laughing) - Wow.

That's fascinating.

Now, either by ship, probably by ship, I imagine, that came over on a ship.

And then his last campaign, you found a piece of music that was written for his campaign.

- Yes.

This is, as you can see, William the Conqueror, it's a march written by a local musician here, Florence Tunison Duncan, and she wrote it in 1908.

And it was for that last-- - Could you open the page for us?

Just so we see what...

So it's an instrumental piece.

- [Announcer] Yes.

- [Mark McDonald] And you've heard it, haven't you?

You've heard a recording of it?

- I have.

A few years ago.

J Peterson, locally here, did a recording of all of the organs in Jacksonville.

And he chose this as one of the pieces in that recording.

- Fascinating.

And these came into your possession just because you keep your eyes open, and you're looking for Bryan's stuff?

- Not on a permanent basis, but at the time that I acquired these back in the early 2000s, I was doing a paper on Bryan and I happened to be on eBay and I saw these three things.

And so I picked them up at that time.

So I've had them 15 or 20 years.

- Very generous of you.

Now they belong to the museum, that's terrific.

- That's where they belong, because family members, my children wouldn't have as much appreciation as I hope will be displayed for them here.

- Yeah, thank you.

- Sure.

- Well, Dave, for many people all over the state of Illinois, when you say Jacksonville, they think of the institutions that were started here.

- They really do.

- And they were, called the blind, for the deaf, there was an asylum for the mentally insane, which they called it at the time.

So those have to be represented here, because Jacksonville's known for that.

- [Dave Blanchette] We're known for that, plus the two educational institutions, what was eventually known as McMurray College and then Illinois College, the oldest college in the state of Illinois.

- [Mark McDonald] And these give you really good... Now, the School for the Deaf, of course, is still here, and you can see in 1839, and these are old institutions.

These were started many, many, many years ago.

- [David Blanchette] Yeah.

The only institutions that aren't here anymore, are the State Hospital, or the Developmental Center, which closed a few years ago, and then McMurray College, which has recently been closed.

- [Mark McDonald] Right, and you have an entire wing here devoted to McMurray College, which we'll talk about and see later on.

But for those who come to Jacksonville, many times, they come here, this is what they come for, to visit people that are in these institutions.

- [David Blanchette] That's correct.

And the history of these is synonymous with the history of the city of Jacksonville.

So we knew we had to do this right in this museum.

- Let's move this way, because there's a very interesting room at the other end of the front hall here.

I like your mums here, that's a very nice touch.

And this is a good idea, this wall here, because what you're doing, you found these photos, I guess, at the newspaper or someplace and say, okay, everybody, let's take a look at these, and who do you know?

(laughing) - [David Blanchette] And it's more a trip down memory lane than anything else.

These are just pictures of prize fish, or prize rutabagas, or ribbon cuttings, or what have you, from the 70s and 80s, and so it's kind of a trip down memory lane for a lot of folks.

- This might be the first stop for most people coming in here.

In fact, you encourage them to come in here because there's a video that plays in here, which sort of sets the table for them in there.

- [David Blanchette] This is what we call our visual storage room.

You've got artifacts on display that are behind cases in other parts of the museum, but some really nice looking artifacts, what we call our eye candy, that aren't on display, we have on display in here.

So there's no real theme, other than that they're interesting to look at.

So people sit in this room and look at these wonderful historic artifacts, while at the same time, watching the orientation video.

And it's just a treat for the senses.

- [Mark McDonald] Yeah.

It's kinda like a man cave.

(laughing) For kids of all ages, right?

- It certainly is.

It's just a hodgepodge of all kinds of stuff.

Of course, all of them with Jacksonville connections, but that might not fit thematically with some of the other exhibits we're doing.

But at the same time, people might be able to learn something from them, or say, oh, that's what telephones looked like back then, or that's what televisions looked like, or aren't these neat little milk bottles?

Things like that.

- And oftentimes, if you give a donation of a piece of history here to the museum, it may end up in here because it might be a curiosity of some kind.

- It might.

- Yeah, really neat.

Okay, Dave, this way to McMurray Hall.

- That's right.

- Most people have heard of McMurray College, many of them don't know that it closed just in the past year.

You had a close relationship with the college, and the board of trustees decided, you know, what we need to do is we need to preserve this in a place where it can be seen so the college isn't forgotten forever.

So that's the idea behind the Hall here?

- This is McMurray Hall.

This is where the artifacts from the recently closed institution reside.

You've got portraits of the presidents.

You've got important artifacts on the history of the college.

And we tell the entire history of the college from the time it was founded in 1846 as a women's institution, up until the time that it included men, and later on, graduates of the college, including myself.

So that's why I have a particular fondness for this Hall, as an alumni of McMurray college myself.

And then at the end of the hallway are the Nellie Knopf paintings, a famous artist who worked for many, many years at McMurray and is internationally renowned for her artwork.

- [Mark McDonald] Tell me if I'm right, now.

My recollection is that McMurray was founded by Illinois college as the female college.

- No, it was not founded by Illinois College.

- Oh, it was not?

- It was founded in 1846 on its own, and it was affiliated with the Methodist church.

In fact, Peter Cartwright, the famous circuit riding minister, we have his original saddlebags on display here, was instrumental in that early founding.

- Can we see those?

- You certainly can.

- Where are those saddlebags?

- You can see them right here.

- Okay.

- Right where it says, "Peter Cartwright saddlebags."

- [Mark McDonald] And they say that Cartwright opened hundreds of churches.

He rode, and rode, and rode, and he opened hundreds.

And of course he ran for Congress, and he was a very, very impressive individual.

- [David Blanchette] So it's really neat that we're able to have that direct connection.

But also, some more recent artifacts right up, including a license plate.

So you've got saddlebags, a method of transporting things way back when.

(crosstalk) - Nice tire, nice tire.

Okay.

Like you say, presidents, the wall of presidents, all of the, of course, the Highlander was the mascot of the teams, the championship penance.

And then back here to Nellie Knopf, who was a very, very well-known artist.

- Very well-known.

She was an instructor at McMurray College, and we have some of her original grade books, and she was a very tough instructor.

(laughing) According to those grade books, she did not cotton to people who didn't have talent.

- [Mark McDonald] Is this her over here?

- [David Blanchette] That's her.

- Well, I would say that's a tough-- (crosstalk) - [David Blanchette] She also was famous for not liking her own name.

And so it's very rare to see her entire name on a painting.

So if people are looking for the Nellie Knopf signature on the painting, they'd be hard pressed to find it.

- [Mark McDonald] I guess if she'd been a writer, she would have had a pseudonym.

She would not have used Knopf.

- [David Blanchette] Probably not.

- [Mark McDonald] She would have used something else.

Okay.

So it was the decision of the board of trustees to maintain this, and you have an agreement with them, the museum has an agreement, to maintain these historical documents.

- We have a longterm agreement with the McMurray Foundation to house the entire collection within this building, and to display pieces and parts of it.

We have a member on my board who is also a member of their board, and we facilitate things that way.

And then we work out thematic exhibits.

If we have maybe a theme coming down the road that we want to have, we'll work with them to see if maybe they can mirror that with some of their artifacts.

- So this is not the entire collection.

You have other McMurray collection items elsewhere in the building.

- Anything you've seen this museum is just a small sampling of what's in the collections of both McMurray Foundation and the Jacksonville Area Museum.

So that gives us the opportunity to rotate things.

- Now, right behind you is an interesting item that there's gotta be a story there.

(laughing) - There is a story.

And if you're a McMurray alum and you're asked about the onion, you're supposed to say, "what onion?"

But it's a story of, this particular piece of produce had to be worn around the necks of certain sorority pledges at McMurray College.

And they were instructed to respond, whenever asked about it, "what onion?"

(laughing) So that's why it's not interpreted.

There's no story there.

It's kind of an inside joke for those from McMurray to just kind of bring back some fond memories of the college.

- [Mark McDonald] But I imagine if you're working here at the desk one Wednesday, Saturday, or Sunday, I imagine you're going to get the question, "why is there an onion there?"

- We often get it, and when I'm here, I keep true to my McMurray roots and I say, "what onion?"

- Yeah.

Well, thank you, Dave.

This is a terrific endeavor.

I'd say it's a great success, because we were here several months ago.

It was nearly empty, and a lot of work needed to be done, but it looks terrific now, thank you.

- Well, thank you.

It's all volunteer, and we appreciate the public support.

- The Jacksonville Area Museum is open Wednesday, Saturday, and Sunday, presently, from 10:00 to 4:00, I think is the right time.

You can come in for free, but they really would like a $5 donation.

With another Illinois Story in Jacksonville, I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - Illinois Stories is brought to you by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, Illinois Arts Council Agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

(music continues)